"Auto Graphics API" option vanished on iOS Player Settings - Cannot select a specific graphics API

Hi,

as the thread title suggests, for some reason I can no longer find the "Auto Graphics API" option in Unity 2020.2 (2020.2.1 to 2020.2.4), under iOS Player Settings. As a consequence, I cannot uncheck it to select a specific graphics API.

The checkbox is regularly present on all other platforms Player Settings, and also in older versions for iOS, as you can see from the screenshots:

This is from Unity 2020.2.4: no iOS "Auto Graphics API" option



This is from Unity 2020.1.16: iOS "Auto Graphics API" option is present


Have you some hints about that issue?

 

I am trying to use the Google VR Cardboard SDK but it needs me to enable either OpenGLES2 or OpenGLES3 the option is no longer there.. don't know how to go about this, building succeeds on unity but in Xcode, it doesn't because the GVR Cardboard SDK has dependencies tied to OpenGLES2 and OpenGLES3!

I have to say, it's kind of frustrating how features just get removed subtly in unity with each update, and sadly, they seem little but are heavily significant.

 

This isn’t Unity’s fault. Apple deprecated OpenGL on all platforms. It looks like Google released a Metal version of the SDK here: https://github.com/googlevr/cardboard-xr-plugin/releases

 

Is there any workaround for older titles published on App Store with OpenGLES? Apple does not accept to upgrade to Metal and gives this error message:

Only way to solve this issue was unchecking the Auto graphics api box and adding OpenGLES manually but now we can't do that in Unity 2020. Is there any recommendation for this issue?

 

You could raise the minimum iOS version.

 

Can I raise the iOS version and drop OpenGLES2 support and migrate to Metal? I tried that but got the same error. Can you give any tips? What iOS should be used? Do I need to remove Metal from UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities? I guess this causes the main issue.

 

I think so. Raise iOS enough so that non-metal devices are out, but make sure your plist requirements are the same as before (so if Unity adds the metal requirement, remove it).

 

Thanks for your help. I raised minimum iOS version to 11, only included Metal in build and deleted Metal from info.plist manually. I published this version without any issue. I am still using 2019 for now but I think it is possible to upgrade to 2020.

 

Hey Alexey, would be nice to fix it not working in Simulator then..
I've submitted a bug Case 1358462, would be glad to know if it could be fixed!

 

Thank you for trying it out!

I've just tried it with iOS 14.5 and still having this issue, here is a full reproduction video:
https://codestage.net/dump/share/2021.08/bug.mp4

And this is a project I used to record a video:
https://codestage.net/dump/share/2021.08/BetaTest.zip

 

Yes I'm using VM to work with macOS using Windows PC.

Thanks for pointing this out, but it does means we are not able to use iOS Simulator from Windows PC anymore thus we just can't test anything against iOS platform without having real iOS device or mac PC, which is a sad loss comparing to the earlier Unity versions which had Metal alternatives and worked in Simulator just fine =(

Does it going to stay this way or something is possible to do in order to revive iOS Simulator support in VMs?

 

Hey Alexey, I just noticed that "Behaviour in Background" got removed on iOS Player Settings under Others/Configuration section. Any idea how to deal Background behaviour on the newer version?

 

Hahaha same xD, I see thanks!!!

 

Does anyone else maintain the documentation? Even the lastest one tells me the option is there. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-PlayerSettingsiOS.html#Rendering

 

Hi Alexey,

I think it's only a matter of time that you have to move on from Unity 2019 to newer ones that only support metal. Right now you can't use Unity 2019 anymore on Google Play if you want to use Unity IAP. With Google there is no problem but what about Apple?

What can you do when you have to move on from Unity 2019 in the future?

If you have popular games, do you need to publish two different versions of those games on the App Store? The original that was build with Unity 2019, and new that was build with newer Unity? That would also mean that you no longer could keep updating the older versions and the players having that version would be stuck. The new versions of the game would also need to have a different name on the App Store. The game's name is a big deal of course and it would look bad to name it something like: Your Game (new version)

There must be games that were build with Unity 2019 or less and that are now facing this problem on the App Store. Do you have any recommendations on how to move forward with this issue?

 

App Store does allow removing support of older devices by bumping the minimum iOS version.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1623/_index.html